


six

by adoluvr



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Hospitals, M/M, the obligatory insanity after episode four amiright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29129862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoluvr/pseuds/adoluvr
Summary: The fifth time Reki loses a beef, he meets Langa a month after.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 2
Kudos: 84





	six

**Author's Note:**

> 30 min drabble! not beta read because im too emotionally unstable

This isn't the first time.

Obviously, it isn't. Obviously, the wind rushing by feels colder. Fleeter. The blunt of a sword against the skin of his cheek that burns worse than when his feet finally _twist,_ trip, lose the solidified grip he's cultivated for years over them in a single, brief moment. 

Reki falls. And with him, so do the red, billowing curtains of pride.

-

It's nothing. The burst of red against the asphalt of the S, _it's nothing._

There's the sound of a revving motorcycle. There's the sound of sneakers against the pavement. There's the sound of another newly made board's wheels clanking on the ground, the swinging of legs, a warm back, hands keeping a hold on him.

Reki raises his unconscious hand to his unconscious head. Vaguely, his blood seems to be blue.

-

A cacophony of colors, a cacophony of billowing curtains obscuring his view. White overpowers his sense. 

Ah, but he'd known this. This situation had never been for _him,_ avuncular enough for _his_ particular being. 

Ah, but he'd known that. His eyes open, slowly, and his gaze falls over Langa's back. The revving of a motorcycle. The sunset screen against the dull end of the wind.

Ah, but he'd known that. How is he going to apologize to Chinen? There's no time to think.

How is he going to apologize to Langa?

  
  


Ah, but you know how.

-

Reki doesn't like hospitals.

There isn't any personal grudge in this, no. Not yet, hopefully. There's scars on his knees and his legs and his arms and elbows and face that remind him of the times he's ended up face front against a white, awful-smelling hospital bed with doctors crowding around him with injections for _this_ and for _that_ and Reki does not really like it. Not the needles. Not the fluid being injected into his veins. Not the immeasurable attempts for his skin to heal, no.

He likes them. The scars.

They don't understand.

-

Langa would understand. Probably.

-

Reki wakes up with a dull throbbing in his head and a wheezing breath, and the first thing he notices is a flutter of blue hair, a person falling out of their chair at his side, and the vase of lilies and peonies resting on the table next to his bed. He blinks.

Langa. _Langa,_ blue-haired and clumsy and teal eyes open cartoonishly wide, lying down on the floor with a disgruntled look on his normally handsome features and Reki takes him in. Takes this in. 

He throws his head back, and _laughs._ The dull throbbing in his head takes an obligatory field day off for a couple minutes. At least for this. As it should.

And Langa's scrambling back up on his feet, nearly jumping on Reki in a way he's never really jumped before, and before they know it Reki has his arms around the blue-haired boy and the blue-haired boy is crying softly into his shoulder like he's messed up. Messed the fuck up. 

Langa is trembling. Reki forgets to do the same.

-

"Wow, didn't expect you to be a crybaby," Reki teases. The bandages on his head don't do a lot to dull his pain, but at least he's not bleeding, anymore. He sees Langa send shifty looks towards him (and the bandages, in particular) and it's amusing. Just a little. 

"I'm _not_ ," Langa protests, soft voice rising in the sort of whiny pitch Reki absolutely adores. "That's a natural reaction, you know?"

"What?" Reki can't help it. Not really. Not when he's playing the fussy partner for once and not when Langa's _this_ disgruntled, anyways. He needs to lift the mood. "You thought I was gonna die or something, didn't'cha?"

Langa makes that disgruntled expression again. Reki threatens to go down on his knees to apologize if it means keeping him at bay from crying, again. Langa seems to appreciate that.

-

"Are you okay?" Langa asks. 

A day has passed by, already. ADAM's left them with a cryptic date for Langa's cryptic beef against him and not shown his face, since. MIYA does not come around an awful lot. 

Langa does. Langa does, and it's not as if he doesn't have friends and it's not as if he doesn't have anything better to do and it's not, also, as if there's anything (anyone) more important to him than Reki. Obviously, he does not need to tell this to him. Not when he knows, already.

It's evening, again. Evening, the same as when Reki had first let go. Let go of those billowing, red curtains of pride. 

It's not as if they've left completely. There's red, new scars blooming on his cheeks and his arms and his knees. If there's any pride left, it's in _them._ Living vicariously, through _them._

Through him. Through those teal eyes.

"'Course I'm okay, Langa." Because he is. This isn't anything new, because it's never been anything new. He's learned to deal with it. It's supposed to happen. It's supposed to. Obviously. Obviously. "Don't take me for a weakling, 'kay?"

He grins. Langa frowns.

_Obviously_.

-

The first time Reki loses a beef, he's frustrated. He slams his board down against the pavement, chooses to pretend like it hasn't happened.

The second time Reki loses a beef, he's still frustrated. But he grabs a cola and a burger and downs it in twenty minutes. And then he's not frustrated anymore.

The third time Reki loses a beef, he stumbles into DOPE SKETCH.

-

He's always been a fast healer. He's out of the hospital on that second day, and Langa chooses to make him sling an arm around his shoulders anyways. It's easier than asking him, _"hey, could I hold your hand?"_ It's easier.

-

Reki looks over his board, and frowns.

"I'm sorry," Langa says, from somewhere behind him. "It's messed up pretty bad, isn't it?'

Reki turns to jab his thumb at the boy's knees. Langa yelps, and jumps away from him.

"Why are _you_ sorry?" Reki grumbles, getting up to take his cheeks between the pads of his thumbs and fingers and squeezing them ruthlessly. Punishment! "You've got nothing to apologize for, Langa."

"I know," and he's not letting his cheeks up. It's almost as if he's pouting, too, and it almost makes the red-haired boy reel. "But you did this for _me,_ didn't you?"

_I did this for myself,_ Reki wants to bite back. Langa's said that, too.

_He's doing it for himself._ With the softest, most wonderful smile on his features. 

It flashes back into his mind like an odd memory. Reki lets his cheeks go in favor of finding a corner to skip to and kneel against, not wanting to let the other see his reddening cheeks. Fuck.

-

The fourth time Reki loses a beef, he downloads a scheduled app.

-

He doesn't need those bandages, anymore. But it's only been a week, and Langa keeps on insisting to get checked regularly for at least a couple more. Reki finds that he appreciates that, but not _this._

His heart feels heavier. There's nothing rolling under his feet and there's no wind flirting with him as he zooms by the S, and there's no crowds cheering him on. There's no blue-haired, clumsy boy next to him running lengths to be better, _become_ better. It's heavy.

He doesn't like to lose.

-

The fifth time Reki loses a beef, he meets Langa a month after.

-

Langa. Beautiful, talented, clumsy _Langa._

Ocean eyes, beautiful, talented, clumsy _Langa._

He doesn't know why he feels the way he does. When it comes to him - when it concerns only _him._

-

Apologizing never helps. Not when Langa already knows and he's pretty sure Langa's going to be apologizing soon, too. That he's going to be crying again and apologizing again and probably (hopefully not) lying against white sheets of his own with all of his blue stripped away from him involuntarily.

And it's then that Reki clenches his fists. Slams them against his chest, looks into those burning, teal eyes with a fire not unfamiliar in his own.

It's then - that he vows to protect him.

Tripping, twisting, _falling._ He's not going to let it effect him, anymore. Not again.

-

The sixth time Reki loses in a beef, Langa's crouching down next to him, holding his body against his. 

-

He's never going to let it affect him, anymore. Not again.

-

  
  
  


The cold of the asphalt against the burning red of his cheeks has never felt better.

  
  
  
  



End file.
